5.3-Beta7: diskless boot up does not show boot messages on screen.

[John Hay]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 02:15:48PM +0900, Rob wrote:
> John Hay wrote:
> >>I am now successfully booting a diskless PC with 5.3-Beta7,
> >>using an etherboot floppy. I can see the initial boot up
> >>from floppy, followed by the downloading of the kernel
> >>("..................done"). But after that no more messages
> >>on the screen anymore, until after a while the login prompt
> >>appears.
> >>
> >>The diskless PC does produce a legitimate /var/run/dmesg.boot.
> >>So I can inspect the bootup process after a successful boot.
> >>
> >>However, if there's a boot problem, I do not at all get a
> >>clue what's going wrong. A verbose boot up on the screen
> >>is then of vital importance.
> >>
> >>So why do i not get any verbose boot up of the kernel
> >>messages with the diskless boot?
> >
> >
> >Uncomment the hints line in your kernel config file or a hints line
> >looking at the example in the GENERIC config and rebuild your kernel.
> 
> I'm not sure I get your point. Just double check for me:
> 
> Currently I have in my DISKLESS kernel configuration file these lines
> 
> #To statically compile in device wiring instead of /boot/device.hints
> #hints          "GENERIC.hints"         # Default places to look for 
> devices.
> 
> 
> Are you suggesting that I have to comment out the hints line here
> to get the kernel messages and bootup sequence printed on my screen?

You have to uncomment that hints line, remove the # in front of the
line. Normally the loader will load the hints file for you, but
etherboot doesn't do that for you.

> Do I have to manually copy /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC.hints to
> /boot, or will that be done automatically?

If you use pxe to netboot, pxeloader will load the hints file for you
but etherboot isn't clever enough to do it, so you have to compile it
into your kernel.

John
-- 
John Hay -- John.Hay at icomtek.csir.co.za / jhay at FreeBSD.org